Funny how much the yanks bring this up to distract from their own food culture.
Nonsense. You can’t bite into an American meal without immediately tasting a wonderful selection of flavours, like:
- salt
- corn-derived sweetener
Don’t be too harsh on them, the second great war is the only time most of them got a holiday outside of the country.
The Bude Tunnel wasn’t even finished yet back then.
I know that it’s mostly a joke, yet it is worth mentioning that those valuable spices were exclusively used by the rich and wealthy. Ordinary people and their food did not benefit from the spice trade at all. If you delve a little bit into culinary history and find out what the aristocrats did with (for example) extremely rare and precious nutmeg the British Empire fought wars over, you want to dig up their bones, revive them, just so that you can kill them again.
Jesus fucking christ, there’s never a shortage of harrowing greed
I mean, that’s true, but hasn’t been the case for at least a century, so why do they still eat like the aristocrats are hoarding all the spices?
We don’t. It’s a bit.
The part people forget is that we didn’t just take the spices, we took the whole cuisine and the people who could cook it.
The general British public has been eating a multicultural diet for a very, very long time. So when you see bangers and mash, rather than wonder why it isn’t spiced, consider that we’re just being retro and tomorrow we’ll have Indian and the next day Chinese and…
What you call Chinese comes with fries and gravy, man.
Edit:🤣🤣🤣 must’ve hit too close to the mark to piss you guys off so much that you go through and downvote every comment I’ve made.
Apparently you really offended all the people who do get chips and curry sauce from the Chinese. Which always felt a bit sacrilegious to me, like these places are known for amazing rice and noodles so let’s get fried potato which we can get at basically any other food place in the UK.
They really can’t take any sort of criticism.
Gravy is something Americans put on everything.
And even in Belgium, we don’t get fries with our Chinese food.
So sounds like you are projecting.
You guys are hilarious. I couldn’t imagine being so confidently wrong all the time.
Americans absolutely do not put gravy on everything. Thats the british and canadians.
Easy now, they’ll go through and downvote every comment you’ve ever made. 🤣
WW2 rationing really messed up their culinary scene
Sure, but that ended in the 50s. They can no longer reasonably use that excuse.
Yes, however the joke originated with American military stationed in the UK in wwII and hasn’t been accurate probably since the 50s
Yeah, in the age of social media this line doesn’t work. Y’all show off your beans on toast and baked potatoes with tuna like it’s a treasure chest.
The real problem in my view is that people don’t recognise post-imperial fusion cusines as ‘legit’ British food even though the curry house is the definition of an Anglo-Indian institution. When people in Britain claim the tikka masala it’s not being twee or politically correct, rather it’s earnestly considering an immigration-originated fusion cusine as part of the wider national one.
Also even pre-20th century British food isn’t exactly bad, I’d argue it doesn’t travel amazingly in many cases but a Sunday roast in our climate is sheer perfection. Too many people expect France or Italy from a country with nothing like their climate.
WW2 rationing really messed up their culinary scene
What? That doesn’t make sense. Even if it was a decade of rationing, that wouldn’t completely wipe out and replace a culture’s cuisine. Just look at all the other countries that had rationing during ww2 and other wars, and their food is still flavorful.
Also this isn’t ancient history stuff, if what you said was true then we’d see that British cuisine was radically better before ww2, but it’s not the case
It’s a real effect. Wikipedia has a whole section about it in their British cuisine article. A combination of rationing continuing well after the war ended (until 1954), agricultural issues, and a bunch of other stuff put Britain in a position where even after rationing ended, the effects stayed on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_cuisine
It’s not the only reason British food has a bad reputation, but it’s part of it.
You can’t improve on perfection
If that were perfection, the rest of the world would be eating it.
I dated a British girl in high school. She microwave broccoli in water. No salt or seasoning. No butter. No nothing.
She took it out, drained the water and told me her dish was done.
That was the last time she made anything for us.
Sounds like me, except I would drink the broccoli water.
Once you reset your palette, cutting out excess salt and sugar and cheap fats, and processed foods, you learn to enjoy the taste of whole foods all on their own. Salted ourselves to taste, which is far less than processed food will add.
Yeah but… microwaved? Just switch that for an oven and we might have terms.
Microwave is brilliant for cooking broccoli. I want it fast, fresh and moist. You kill the flavour and the nutritional value by overcooking it in an oven.
You can put it in a bit of water on the stove for a few minutes and get the same result too, without overcooking it. I know microwaves are faster though, but I have a different appreciation of time I guess…
Yeah I use my hob (British for stove) when I have a larger quantity to do. It’s also an excellent way to do it.
…there’s gotta be a healthy solution somewhere between industrially processed meals and plain microwave-boiled broccoli
France too! French cooking is WILDLY overrated, they coast by on their desserts and pastries and those are just good cause butter
The thing that makes French food good is their liberal use of butter.
The British eat so much Indian food it’s crazy. There’s a Nando’s on damn near every corner in London.
I’m assuming those are meant to be unrelated statements?
Cause Nandos is Portuguese-African fusion food
:-p My mistake.
But it’s generally spicier than beans on toast, is my point
ITT people believing the self-deprecating jokes white cultures have been telling about themselves are actually 100% true
Everyone always forgets that Chicken Tikka Masala is a British dish and one of the most popular meals in the country
The British claiming tikka masala is like NYC claiming pizza.
It’s quite well established that it’s a British dish. Curry in general isn’t, but Tikka masala is. It’s like Canada claiming Pizza Hawaii.
Its not so clear cut: https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/1145119758/who-created-chicken-tikka-masala-the-death-of-a-curry-king-is-reviving-a-debate
“It’s kind of like: who invented chicken noodle soup?” says Leena Trivedi-Grenier, a freelance food writer who probed the various origin claims in 2017. “It’s a dish that could’ve been invented by any number of people at the same time.”
“How do you colonize and enslave an entire country for a century and then claim that one of their dishes is from your own country?”
Still possible it was created by the South Asian diaspora in Britain but there’s a reason the likes of Nigel Farage want CTM “remigrated” and not so for the likes of Shephard’s Pie or Yorkshire Pudding.
Walking down a high street in the UK. I smell loads of spices from even the shit takeaways.
curry doesn’t count.
Why not? If that is the case then American cuisine is limited to corn syrup and growth hormones.
Lol. You went to Florida and only ate fast food, didn’t you?
No, because if you deny everything British that is similar to something else you must do the same for everything American. Doesn’t leave you with many options.
The tragedy is that many of the spices most jealously traded for became so integral to British and international cuisine that memesters don’t even realise that they were ever unusual or expensive. I guarantee you that those baked beans have a bunch of black pepper in them and guess what… pepper don’t grow in Britain! It’s in more or less every single kitchen thanks to a global spice trade that is now forgotten. Ginger is a main flavour in many British recipes and also doesn’t grow in Britain.
But Britain was in fact not that big a player in the spice trade, being beaten by the Dutch, who got there first and had better financial backing. The British East India Company tried to make its way by raiding ships of the Dutch East India Company but after a bunch of wars eventually had to settle for less exciting endeavours - trade in cotton being a staple.
The Dutch are themselves not renowned for their food either, though it is my firm belief that every country has great food if you’re willing to look past your prejudices, and stamppot is great.
visited a greggs for the first time this summer, i was genuinely shocked at what they served. it’s like they went out of their way to not put any flavor in. and it was packed.
Yeah because a Stilton and cheese bake is totally favoueless, right?
Not enough salt and corn syrup for the discerning American tongue
What’s funny is that you idiots have no idea how stupid you sound when you say this shit.
HFCS
Bro doesn’t know what he’s eating 💀💀
I know what corn syrup is, dumbass. Do you think that fast food and junk food is all that we have?
Aw dude
Not as stupid as Americans putting corn syrup in everything.
I’ve never used corn syrup to cook anything. Once again, your ignorance is obvious.
